International Journal of Euro-Mediterranean Studies Table of Contents 3 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE In the Search for New Experiences – The Way to Creative Tourism Development Zrinka Zadel, Elena Rudan 21 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Budget Deficit Volatility, Institutional Quality and Macroeconomic Performance Asmaa Ezzat, Rana Hosni 41 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Tourist Route – A Trail of Authors and Poets of the County of Zagreb Romana Lekić 67 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Decision Making Theories in Medicine Reimbursement Almin Adzović, Danica Purg, Tina Vukasović 93 SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Conceptualization of the Digitalization: Opportunities and Challenges for the Organizations in the Euro-Mediterranean Area Tilen Gorenšek, Andrej Kohont 117 Abstracts 121 Résumés 127 Povzetki 131 Volume 12 | 2019 | Number 2 IN THE SEARCH FOR NEW EXPERIENCES – THE WAY TO CREATIVE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ZRINKA ZADEL, ELENA RUDAN Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Croatia | 3 | Over the last decade, new forms of cultural tourism are being increasingly mentioned as innovative development models of this specific form of tourism. One of these forms is creative tourism which tourism destinations use to innovate their tour- ism offer. In the Republic of Croatia, this trend is particularly present in summer holiday destinations that aim to reduce their high seasonality with new creative programmes and pro- jects. By introducing a creative offering, tourism destinations can increase their competitiveness in the tourism market and become distinctive by their specific programmes. The paper -ex plores the development in Croatia of both cultural tourism and creative tourism, as an enhancement to a destination’s cultural offering. It analyses the current state of creative tourism and looks at the motivations for tourist arrivals to Croatia, with special reference to cultural attractions and events as a travel motivation. The paper also examines the creative offerings of individual destinations as well as target tourist segments, for the purpose of helping to create an innovative cultural offering. Key words: creative tourism, Croatia, cultural tourism, destina- tion management Volume 12 | 2019 | Number 2 In the Search for New Experiences – The Way to Creative Tourism Development INTRODUCTION In recent decades, cultural tourism has increasingly gained an important presence in international tourism trends. It has be- come one of the most important forms of special-interest tour- ism. The reason for this surely lies in the diverse changes to the lives of modern people, which have brought about changes in travel interests and motivations. First among these changes are various sources of information, the most important being | 4 | the Internet, which provide potential travellers with insight into the tourism offering the likes of which tourists up to the 1990s could not even have imagined. Another change is the in- creased educational level of world travellers and their desire to know new things and their constant search for new experiences. Most tourist trips involve some cultural segment, whether it is listening to the songs of local singers while on vacation or at a beach or attending a concert, exhibition or other cultural attrac- tion that requires travelling to a distant venue. Modern tourists have access to information and are constantly looking for new experiences in culture; regardless of whether the cultural and art motivation is incidental or intentional, it is a part of every travel. Each tourist destination offers its own specific cultural and historical heritage and its cultural assets, created within its territory, and seeks to design its own cultural tourism product, making it as attractive, interesting and, most importantly, as competitive as possible on the tourism market. THEORETICAL DETERMINANTS OF CULTURAL TOURISM Cultural tourism is a specific form of tourism that is, in all its complexity, determined by various cultural attractions, re- sources and events. A variety of authors (Pančić Kombol 2006; Vrtiprah 2006; Tomljenović 2007; Jelinčić 2008; 2010; Rudan 2010; Rudan and Stipanović 2014; McKercher and Du Cros 2002; Steneicke 2007) have contributed to the term’s definition as well as its distinctiveness and identification in both the sci- entific and tourism literature and in everyday business activi- ties. This form of tourism is foremost determined by a stay in a Volume 11 | 2018 | Number 2 Zrinka Zadel, Elena Rudan destination motivated by culture and art. Dragićević Šešić and Stojković (2013, 139) see such travels as providing opportunities for getting to know other worlds and cultures as well as oppor- tunities for evaluating one’s own culture and personality traits in contact with the different and the unknown. Because the po- tential for merging the tourism experience with the art experi- ence is huge and limitless, the combination of culture/art and tourism is a source for the design of a variety of cultural tourism attractions. The same authors go on to claim that a great respon- | 5 | sibility lies with the cultural sector as well, in particular with public institutions, in designing programmes and offerings to meet special tourist interests and the specific demands of tour- ists as groups and as individuals. While tourists are motivated by culture and art to different degrees, it can be said that culture and art motivation, whether primary or incidental, is nothing new; it has existed since the beginning of tourism travel. In the past, tourism travel was motivated by Ancient Greece, the desire to see Europe, attend concerts, exhibitions, etc. Today there is an entire array of new motivations (acquiring new knowledge, becoming actively involved in elements of a destination’s offer- ing) driving travellers to take trips motivated by culture. Over the past 15 years or so, overall tourism development in Croatia has focused considerably on boosting various forms of special-interest tourism, cultural tourism in particular, as evi- denced by documents providing guidelines at both the nation- al level and the micro destination level. In 2003 the Croatian Ministry of Tourism adopted the Cultural Tourism Development Strategy, the first document in Croatia to define this specific form of tourism as special-interest tourism with people trav- elling outside their usual place of residence motivated entirely or partially by their interest in the history, art, heritage or life- style of a locality, region, group or institution. The Ministry of Tourism initiated the development of the strategy with the aim of identifying strategic measures to provide incentive to the pri- vate and the public sector to achieve the following objectives: to include the cultural sector in the tourism product of destina- tions as a way of prolonging the tourist season; to increase sec- ondary spending; to drive greater spending and extend the stay Volume 11 | 2018 | Number 2 In the Search for New Experiences – The Way to Creative Tourism Development of guests in a destination; to develop a critical mass of cultural products and attractions; and to use the knowledge and talents of cultural workers in tourism interpretation, promotion and presentation. The 2013 Strategy of Tourism Development by 2020 brought new elements and directions and identified the major barriers to continued growth as being in the commercialisation system (primarily, in its integration into world-scale systems) and in the destination management system, which should en- | 6 | able cultural facilities/services to be properly integrated in posi- tioning and delivering the overall experience at the destination level. According to the 2013 document, cultural tourism prod- ucts of particular relevance for Croatia are city tourism, heritage tourism, event tourism, creative tourism and spiritual tourism. Adopted in 2015 by the Ministry of Tourism, the Action Plan for Cultural Tourism identifies five major programme areas for the further development of cultural tourism. These are:infrastructu - re for cultural tourism (aimed at ensuring high-quality infrastruc- ture for the presentation and interpretation of tangible and in- tangible cultural heritage, and the integration of the products of creative and cultural industries which would provide visitors with opportunities for well-designed, interactive and informal learning about the significance of cultural goods and would en- able destinations to identify their unique and authentic features and communicate them to visitors), the development of cultural tourism products (aimed at creating a diversified cultural tour- ism offering to ensure the temporal and geographic dispersion of tourism demand and more-balanced regional development, and improve the quality and, in turn, the competitiveness of the cultural tourism offering. The measures in this programme area refer to the formation of more-complex products and the inte- gration of offerings through cultural theme routes and itiner- aries at national and regional levels and their networking with European cultural routes, the rejuvenation of destinations using festivals and events, the fostering of the development of com- plementary products to enrich the experience, and the boosting of small and medium-sized enterprises), cultural tourism marke- ting (aimed at strengthening the image of Croatia in the interna- tional market as a country rich in cultural tourism products of Volume 11 | 2018 | Number 2 Zrinka Zadel, Elena Rudan diverse elements and features that contribute to making experi- ences authentic, and raising awareness